Rescued

There is something deeply rejuvenating about diving into a task or a hobby, becoming completely enveloped in the activity. These are the moments when time is only recognized as "now," and when space is a concept that is foreign outside of what you are doing. Sometimes when I feel my mind wander into territories all to familiar and painful, territories that are bereft of any real warmth or spark and laden with pitfalls and traps, I find it difficult to escape. I find myself circling this territory within its terrifying boundaries, afraid of what's going to happen, what already did happen and wondering how the hell I'm going to get out. All I need to do is look up, take a good look around, and see the things that I have to be grateful for. If I just looked up, I would notice a clear path toward a more calm and giving environment. It is in these moments of losing myself totally to the activity that I am impassioned about that I find myself walking on that path and escaping this never-ending sense of dread and anxiety.

I paint, I write, I walk, I'm teaching myself how to play the piano on an electric keyboard. I just finished a lesson in Harmonic 4ths and 5ths. The piece chosen for the lesson? Jingle Bells.

I remember when I was learning how to type on a keyboard in elementary school. I was the fastest in the class to get it down pat. I breezed through all the lessons instructed by the computer program and reached the point where I could look up at a sentence away from the keyboard and type quickly and efficiently. While everyone else whiled away at their lessons, I was stuck in the classroom, playing some old detective game while the rest of the students caught up.

I've been typing like a mad woman ever since. But now that I've come across a different kind of keyboard -- one composed of a different kind of harmony -- I have to repeat those lessons again. I'm brought back to those first days in that typing class when I was first learning where the "Home Base" for my fingers went, where all the other keys were positioned, the most efficient ways of reaching the other keys and still knowing where my hands were, and using both hands at the same time to type. I completely forgot how hard it was to first learn to type with both hands. I can thank Jingle Bells for reminding me.

My point is, though, that I had a blast learning it! It's new and challenging and it rescues me from this unwelcoming place in my mind where havoc wreaks on the daily. This anxiety wants to pull me down into a darkness that will eat me alive. But I have my curiosity about the world and a growing sense of positivity to help yank me from the darker depths of my weird, twisted little mind.